A rock feels no pain
by Lakritzwolf
Summary: A series of violent burglaries and several murdered trolls. There is a link between those, as Vimes finds out. A horrible one. OneShot short story featuring the Watch.


**Disclaimer:** I do not own DW nor the Characters that inhabit it. I only do things to them.  
**Featuring:** The Watch.  
**Note:** I was in a strange mood while writing this, but that happens to all of us, doesn't it. And if this seems to you like a stack of fallen polaroids, that is the way I like writing my short stories.  
**Warning:** Death of a minor character involved.  
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"This is the fifth explosion of that kind in one week! The patrician will have explanations for this, and I don't have any! Godsdamnit!"

Commander Sam Vimes had every reason to be in a foul mood, but then, so had practically everyone around him. They all felt, somehow, to have gone back in time, remembering the hideous affair about the gonne, a strange and new weapon, unknown but horrendously effective. This was something alike.

A series of explosions of shops and houses which got robbed directly after the explosion in he panic that ocurred had kept the watchmen on their feet for weeks now.

It all happened in broad daylight, and, of course, no thieves guild licences anywhere. The thieves guild, as they had poignantedly pointed out in the last meeting of guilds about this affair, did not use explosives to break in. It was not their style.  
And besides, they did not kill the owners, that was no sustatinable business.

And if that alone hadn't been bad enough, seven trolls had been killed during the same time, hewn to pieces, you could almost say, and the dwarves, while heftily denying it, were at unease as well as the trolls now, so shortly after the Koom Valley unrest.

The dwarves themselves now prowled the streets at night looking for the murderers, for they knew the trolls would firstly blame then, and it hadn't been them, they said. And even the trolls tended to believe them, after a while. Dwarves did not kill the women of their enemies in their beds and houses.

So all Vimes had were a couple of houses that had all but exploded, dead inhabitants and/or owners, and the only clue as to what it could have been some strange, round, little metal devices. They had found the latest crime scene, today in fact, and now they were all sitting around it, staring at the thing lying on commander Vimes' desk.

And of course, they were seven dead trolls and their grieving relatives. The trolls had been female, all of them. That made it, somehow, worse.

"We might get some explanations yet", Cheery said as she carefully prodded the thing. "This one looks like it should have exploded, but hasn't. Maybe you should all leave the room now, carefully and slowly. I'll deal with this."  
"Are you sure, Cheery?" Vimes said, leaning forward, but Cheery shot him a stare that was more than worrying.  
"Carefully and slowly, Sir. And, preferably, very quickly, as well."

No one felt like this was their lucky day, so they all did what Cheery said and left, leaving her alone with the strange explosive device, waiting for the final boom.

It didn't come, and after about an hour, Cheery came out with the device in one hand and a mug in the other. A foul, sour-sweetish smell emanated from the mug, and everyone but Detritus wrinkled their nose. Detritus, in fact, looked suddenly even more stony, it that was anyhow possible for a troll like him.

"That was inside", Cheery said. "This strange powder, and a smaller container with water. It seems like if you pull at this piece of wire, the container opens and the water and the powder mix, and then the thing will explode, probably. I have to make some tests first, but I'm pretty sure that this is how it works. As to what _this_ is..." Looking into the mug, she just shrugged and was off at the same moment, closing the door to her laboratory firmly behind her.

Silence spread among the watchmen as Cheery was gone, and everyone exchanged glances with everyone else, except Detritus who still stared at the door through which Cheery had dissappeared.

They had been running shifts without breaks for days to get to the bottom of the series of exposions, and now everyone was so tired and strained that no one realised at first that Detritus looked, in fact, like a corpse, immobile, stony, and somehow grey, like covered in ash. Vimes was, after a little while, the first to notice.

"Detritus?"  
"Dat smell..."  
"What about it?"  
"Bad", said the troll, and shook himself like a wet dog, that is, like a mountain trembling under a little punctuated earthquake. Nonetheless, it was disturbing.

"I think I could trace that smell", Angua said. "Whoever makes these things must have a workshop somewhere."  
"Sounds good, Seargent Angua", Vimes replied, chewing on his cigar while not taking his eyes off Detritus.  
"Don't let that smell get on you, Seargent", he said. "We all thought it foul, and if even a troll thinks so, it must be foul, indeed, your noses usually don't react to the same things as ours."  
"Dis is a troll-smell", Detritus said, looking deeply disturbed. "A troll-smell."

But before Vimes could ask, Angua re-emerged from the changing room, four-legged and ready. "Off we go, men, and keep your eyes open. Your noses, optionally, as well."

So, after gagthering Cheery and her gear up, they set off again, following Angua through the streets of Ankh-Morpok, on the trail of a scent that only she could possibly find. Lagging behind, Detritus looked like someone had been tinkering with his helmet and actually set the thing on heating. Still, Vimes was too preoccupied with finding a trace to worry about the troll, or the 'troll-smell' that he had mentioned.

From the last scene of the crime onward, Angua seemed to have found a trail, it was clear and leading towards the shades. Whoever it was, they did not know that the watch had a werewolf, for there was no trace of a scent-bomb, nothing whatsoever had been done to cover up the traces of smell they clearly must have known they left.

The chase ended in front of a little back door, the house hardly more than a ramshackle hut so typical for this area of the shades, and as Vimes and Carrot broke in, they found two men sitting over a collection of valuables, jewellery and a dozen of these little metal devices.

Taken completely aback, they gave up instantly and let themselves be captured, they had felt so safe that they never had tgought about being caught. They had, as they admitted, thought of leaving the city in a few days and trying others out, but that, luckily, had now been forestalled.

Carrot read them their rights, Vimes rubbed his hands together and re-lighted his cigar, and Angua returned from a room next door with the bag that had held her uniform which Detritus had been carrying with him.

Angua noticed as well now, that something seriously was wrong with the troll.  
"Detritus?"  
"Dat troll-smell", said the big troll, looking at her in agony. Angua almost flinched, there was no other word for it. The troll looked like he had just dug his own grave.  
"What's wrong?" she asked, and Detritus pointed to a small heap of rubble under the table.

Cheery was on her knees in an instant and picked a few pieces up, they were shell-shaped, almost like remmnants of stony eggs. She blinked a few times in confusion, then paled visibly, even under all that beard, and swallowed dryly before looking up again.

"These are..." she said, then shook her head. "I've seen these only once before, and..."  
"Cheery?" Vimes leaned forward, troubled by Cheery's confusion.  
"Troll's eggs, we called them, Sir", Cheery said, shooting an unsure look towards Detritus. "As far as I know, young baby trolls hatch from these things."

Vimes dropped his cigar as he stared openmouthed at his officer. "You're joking..." He then turned to look at Detritus who looked so unhappy that Vimes knew she wasn't. "Detritus, tell me that isn't true."  
"It be not true", Detritus said, his voice scratchingly hoarse. "Not completely. Dey do grow in dese geodes, dem troll-lings. But dey do so in deir mama's body. Dey break when de trolls are born."

Silence answered these words as the watchmen realised what Detritus had been saying. Vimes felt his bile rise, but forced the words out nontheless. Suddenly there was a connection between two different sets of crimes. The dead trolls of the last weeks...

"So these are... trolls that... have never been born?"  
"Right."  
Very slowly, as not to explode, Vimes turned to face the two burglars, summoning all his strength of will not to just go and throttle them."I don't believe this. You bastards actually slaughtered seven... pregnant... trolls to... what? Build explosives? Where the heck have you known from that these things were explosive at all?" The two thugs exchanged a look, but none of them answered.

"Right", Vimes said. "If I don't get an answer, I'm sure Seargent Detritus here will."  
"Guild of Alchemists!" One of the men yelped as Detritus made a step forward. "I was thrown out because I wouldn't work with lead and gold but with explosives! And I said I..."  
"Shut up." Vimes spat out. "You wanted to show them all, didn't you? Make them shiver in fear so that you could have the last laugh. It's all the same, everytime and everywhere. Captain Carrot, get them out of my sight."

They left the house shortly after that, and as soon as he was outside, Detritus walked off, purposefully, and seemingly in haste.  
"Seargent! We're..." Vimes said, but Angua shook her head. "I think he wants to check on Ruby", she said. "He hasn't been home for a few days, like all of us."  
"Gods, youre right", Vimes said, feeling suddenly worse. "Let's go with him. I have a feeling about this."

So Angua and Vimes followed the troll, and the nearer he seemed to get to his home, the faster he was walking. He was, in fact, finally walking so fast that his knuckles were hardly touching the ground any more, and he didn't set them on the ground together any more, either. He ran like a trotting horse, and to keep up with his strange, crossing stride, Angua and Vimes had to run. Only then they realised that there were others, Cheery and Carrot, who had followed them as well.

When they finally reached Detritus' house, the troll had already dissappeared inside, and with a ungood feeling Vimes and his squad followed him down the stairs.

As soon as they saw the open door they all knew that something bad had happened. And seconds later they also knew what it was. The strange, sour-sweetish smell permeated the air, and Vimes could only take his helmet off as he entered.

Detritus stood like a statue in the middle of the room, and off to one side, lying on the ground, was Ruby. Her body had been hewn open like a rock with a pickaxe, and a fine, silty mass had trickled from the cleft and covered the floor around her. Ruby was dead.

Next to her body there was one of the troll-eggs, broken, shattered probably during the terrible assault on Ruby, the strange-smelling powder was spilled between the shards, and in the middle was... Vimes really could not look longer than a second.

It must have been a troll-ling, but it had dried out, looked a little flaky, like layers of old, burnt paper. And at this thing Detritus was staring, absolutely still.

"Detritus", Vimes whispered, his voice letting him down. "Gods... I... I'm sorry..."

As he looked around him, he saw that his squad was seemingly as sick as he himself felt, even Carrot was pale, Angua was staring at Detritus and Cheery covered her eyes with one hand. The sound she made could have been a sob.

As Vimes stood there at the bottom of the stairs, not knowing if he should cry or throw up, he realised that Angua beside him stiffend, tilted her head and walked slowly past Detritus to the back wall of the room. There she bend down in front of the fireplace and picked something out of the ashes there, a round, stony object.

As she stood up, swallowing, and made a hesitant step towards Detritus, the troll moved for the first time since they had entered the room and held out his hand.

Carefully and with trembling hands, Angua put the stone-egg into Detritus huge, stony paw and stepped back, and the troll slowly brought his hand in front of his face, staring at the stone. "It be still warm", he said, his voice strangely detached, then he closed his fingers around the stone and broke it.

Angua found herself biting her thumb as she watched the troll slowly open his big hand again, and from between his fingers fell small shards of stone, a fine, silty mud and some of that strange, smelly powder. But in his hand...

On the palm of Detritus huge and calloused hand was something small and brown, as big as Angua's fist. And it looked, for all that's worth, like a tiny, little version of Detritus himself.

Agonizingly slowly, Detritus other hand moved, and the forefinger of his other hand touched the tiny thing on his hand. And... it moved.  
Two small stony hands, hardly bigger than Angua's thumbs, reached out and grabbed the finger that had been prodding it, like a child would hug a tree-trunk, making a sound like two pepples grinding together.

Absolutely still-faced, Detritus slowly closed his fingers around the baby in his hand and then, slowly as well, sat down on the nearest chair behind him. Still not moving, still staring at the little troll protected by his hand, he shook his head and then he looked up at Vimes.

"I may be needing a few days off", he said, and Vimes could only swallow and wipe his eyes.


End file.
